A Boeing 777-312 (ER) passenger plane affiliated with Singapore Airlines landed at Hong Kong International Airport on 01 August 2018 in Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
S3 Studio | Getty Images News | Getty Images
SINGAPORE – Combined free leisure travel between Hong Kong and Singapore will resume on November 22, according to details of the bilateral travel bubble released on Wednesday.
Under the new guidelines passengers will be allowed to travel between the two locations without the need to separate at the time of arrival. Instead, they will have to test the Covid-19 and give a negative result within 72 hours before departure. All passengers arriving in Hong Kong will also have to take the Covid-19 test at the airport upon arrival.
There will be no restrictions on the purpose of travel and there will be no need for controlled travel or sponsorship. However, passengers must not have a travel history to any place outside of Hong Kong or Singapore within 14 days of departure.
Arrivals will be subject to local Covid-19 restrictions in related markets, such as downloading a contact tracing application and wearing a mask. Any passengers who contract the virus will have to bear their own medical costs.
Initially flights will be limited to one per day in each city with a limit of 200 passengers per flight.
If the coronavirus situation does not worsen in any city, the number of daily flights from December to December is expected to increase in each city. However, if both sides have a weekly average of more than five confirmed cases per day, the bubble will be suspended for two weeks, noted Hong Kong’s economic development and commerce secretary, Edward Yau.
The appointment states that air travel bubble flights will only ferry passengers traveling between Hong Kong and Singapore, and will not include transporters from any of the cities, the announcement said.
Hong Kong and Singapore first announced plans for a bilateral travel bubble in mid-October, as both cities seek to repair some of the damage caused by the coronavirus epidemic on their hard-hit tourism and aviation industries.
Without domestic air travel markets, two business centers in Asia rely heavily on international travel. Last year, Hong Kong received more than 3,453,000 visitors from Singapore, compared to 1,000,000,000,000 from Singapore, according to official figures from the respective cities.
When we can start small, this is an important step. I have no doubt that both Singapore and Hong Kong will cooperate fully to make this plan work.
Ong Ye Kung
Minister of Transport of Singapore
The agreement will soon reduce the number of flights between the two destinations to 18 per pre-epidemic. Nevertheless, Singapore’s Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung called the agreement “the first of its kind” and said it could somehow move forward in re-establishing international travel.
“The Singapore-Hong Kong air travel bubble enables us to achieve two objectives at once – by opening our borders in a controlled manner, while maintaining safety in our society,” he said.
“While we can start small, this is an important step. I have no doubt that both Singapore and Hong Kong will fully cooperate to make this plan work. It will be a useful reference for other countries and countries controlling the region. Are considering opening their borders, ”he added.
Both Singapore and Hong Kong have been early advocates of introducing travel agreements with other low-risk countries.
Singapore, for its part, has unilaterally opened its borders to tourists from select countries, including Australia, Brunei, Mainland China, Vietnam and New Zealand. Meanwhile, Hong Kong is said to be in talks with 10 countries, including Japan and Thailand, over a similar arrangement.
As of November 10, there were 58,073 total confirmed coronavirus cases in Singapore and 28 people had died. A total of 5,390 confirmed cases and 108 deaths were reported in Hong Kong.
– CNBC’s Yen Ni Lee contributed to this report.
.
